Kerzner's New Gamble:
Taking Sun Private

By

Linda Sandler and

Christina Binkley Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Feb. 2, 2000 12:01 a.m. ET

A few years ago, South African-born tycoon Solomon Kerzner set out to storm the U.S. gambling market. In 1996, fresh from selling his Sun City theme resort near Johannesburg, where his ambitions and romances earned comparisons to Donald Trump, he bought Merv Griffin's casino company Resorts International Inc. He had big plans to change the way the Atlantic City, N.J., business was run.

That never happened. Indeed, the stocky 64-year-old chairman of Sun International Hotels Ltd., concedes his foray into New Jersey's highly...